Wtd pre amp to suit Quad 909

[Bourney]

Budget upto £650.

Something compact and stylish would be a bonus.

[walpurgis]

This is the obvious candidate. Quad 99: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Quad-99-Pre-Amp-/182723806341?epid=93823972&hash=item2a8b300485:g:PmsAAOSwzz1ZmCrA

[IHP]

Does the Ear for sale here fit the bill Steve ? I've heard that a Croft pre, 909 and Harb combo swings. And they have a style of their own !

[Andy831]

I use a Glasshouse TVC with my 606. Seems a pretty good match Steve

[walpurgis]

The 99 pre-amp and 909 power amp pairing have been reviewed very favourably several times. These units are obviously a perfect match to each other, as they were designed to work together.

Here's one such review: http://www.stereotimes.com/amp081602.shtml

I personally, would not consider any other pre-amplifier for use with the 909.

[DSJR]

With the Quad, a passive's best - been there and done it guv'nor! But you lot don't want me to say that, so make sure any active preamp doesn't colour the signal too much as the 909 will reproduce it. Croft is good, but they do change the sound of the amp a bit - not negatively ime, but they do add something...

The 77 preamp had an unreliable remote but sounded sweet and airy (better in this respect imo than the 34 and 44 variants) and in the manner of the old valve stuff to me (but far clearer obviously). The 99 was reportedly similar but with a better single-way remote control.

The last few times I've heard this amp design was as a QSP with the Elite preamp (sounded characterless in a negative way and was easily beaten musically by a Croft integrated), but the last time was in full Artera form with the Artera Play CD-preamp. Absolutely wonderful sound and great looking too, if not in a butch 'audiophool' way! I'm assuming the amp isn't so different from the 909...

Hope this helps. A good working 909 with good caps inside (a can of worms this, but you'll hear it if it's not a good one) is pretty transparent to what goes into it, so if you want to 'tailor' it to your requirements, you should be able to do this further upstream. As I said, a £100 NVA passive for example will do the job just fine (the dearer ones add inputs, outputs and possibility of nice stepped attenuators) and you'd seriously have to consider carefully an active preamp alternative if the sonics aren't to be altered.

[hornucopia]

Now THAT'S the kind of answer we like!

[Sondekker]

For what it's worth, I thought it might be worth me commenting that for the two weeks I had the EAR 834L that I'm currently selling in my system, it was driving a Quad Artera power amp and sounded very nice indeed. The EAR 868 I had until a couple of weeks ago also sounded excellent with the Quad Artera. I have always felt that the combination of a good valve preamp into a good solid state power amp is often a perfect marriage.

[DSJR]

This may not be of interest to subjective types, but what I've tried to do in recent times is to listen to a suitable source straight into a power amp, then listen again with a preamp inserted and volumes set as closely as possible to see what happens to the sound. I appreciate it's not as objective as Harbeth would like with their little switchbox... but I've been surprised how much 'domestic spec' active preamps do actually colour the sound of the music passing through them. I think many LIKE this extra colour and where Croft is concerned, after hearing his two box top model for any length of time, you can hear the 'dirt' and bass colouration added by the Micro 25, although to be eternally fair to the latter, the effects of this disappear very quickly from the musical scene until you go back up to the top model - a range where you hear what the designer needs to take out to bring the price down, or add in to fully realise the design - all measurable I'm sure as well, so no foo involved.

I suppose it depends on whether you want the preamp to act as a kind of tone control or processor and I do feel with experience that so many *domestic* items like this deliberately act this way. Domestic audio peeps worldwide don't seem to want 'the truth' as such and the continued sales of Naim* on the one hand and ARC and McIntosh on the other must offer some kind of proof here.. *Naim have changed a lot and several times since the first bolt-up products, but there's still a kind of 'contrived' quality to them I now find irritating...

Forgive me if I'm spouting out of turn. One way a decent active preamp would work superbly is if the power amp was right in between the speakers and the preamp situated several metres away. This would keep speaker leads as short and benign as possible and the line buffer in the preamp may well become more acoustically inert driving the extra length of interconnect cables (my once owned AVI S2000MP+P was perfect in this role and better in my opinion than driving a metre or so to a nearby power amp). Just a thought.

lastly, one of these could make a pukka professional line driver with volume control. there's so little in it I doubt it's going to have any sonic effect ;) Depends how many inputs you need to switch. It's gone up a bit in recent years though as it doesn't seem long ago it was well under three hundred notes...

https://spl.info/en/products/monitor-controller/volume2/overview.html

[take5]

Steve. i still have my Audio Innovations L2 pre amp which I weill sell.

Modded to the max by Definitive, and sounds fantastic.

you will have heard it at my last Bake off.

Im using it with a small quad amp. a 306. it matches really well. So im sure it would be great with your bigger Quad

Of course, some folks have different views of what "stylish and compact " means:)

Welcome to borrow for a trial if you wanted.

[hifi_dave]

Croft Micro 25. I sell a lot of these to partner Quad power-amps.

[Bourney]

Ok I think I'm sorted thanks everyone. I'm going to give a nice glasshouse passive a go first.

Brian, I've seen and heard that AI. It's a tasty number but I'd already committed to the other one. Thanks for the offer matey. Hope to catch up at some point.

[walpurgis]

Ok I think I'm sorted thanks everyone. I'm going to give a nice glasshouse passive a go first

I reckon that'll work nicely Steve.

Are you getting the basic passive or the TVC unit?

[Bourney]

Seems to be a souped up non tvc one with bits of silver etc. Fingers crossed.

[Sixty2]

Hi Steve,

PM'd you, though I think your inbox is full. Mark.

[Bourney]

Emptied Mark, sorry.